Another Land Rover being welded. Finished, yo!

[dave21478]

After a long period of mojo loss, I decided to get off my arse and fix up my Landy. This is the first tinkering I have done for quite a while, not counting plodding through routine maintenance and repairs of the daily use cars, and I am pretty chuffed overall. I dont have a huge amount of free time so this will be evenings and weekends only.

 

 

The car....my old Freelander. yeah, yeah, I know....its a girls car, not a proper offroader, hairdressers runnabout blah blah blah...you know what? I like it. It actually surprisingly capable off road, only hampered by lack of lo-ratio and on the road its pretty civilised and car-like to drive. This is a van version, so ideal for what I need for daily use and work.

 

I have had this car for years....5 or 6 years, I think - which is by far one of the longest periods of time I have owned any car, so that must count for something. Its not been without its problems though, having had several not very careful owners before me. I bought it at the bottom of the price range at a clearance car auction in Scotland and since then its provided sterling service with the occasional wallet-denting breakdown...highlights include 4 new injectors, a new turbo and a new viscous coupling.

 

I laid it up several months ago due to the clutch being on its way out and the body suffering from rust. Freelanders seem to be one of the better Land Rover products for rot resistance. You only ever really see them either rust-free or the odd totally rotten one. Typically mine is the latter. This was never picked up earlier due to French MOT tests not caring about rust. The last few CT reports have just said "multiple corrosion points" as an advisory. I could have kept on using it but for my own piece of mind I preferred to weld it up. I could also have just lashed a plate over the top of the sills, but that would just prolong the inevitable by a year or two - I preferred to do it properly.

 

I dug it out of where its been sleeping for months. It took an Austin Powers style 23-point turn to reverse it into there and getting it out today was the same deal, which was tricky with a dud clutch.

 

Into the garage and up on some old rims. I hate welding upside down, so wanted to get it nice and high.

 

I often lurk around carpet shops and snap up roll-ends of Lino as my garage floor is just dirt. Dusty as hell in summer and muddy as hell in winter.

 

The back of the sill. Another problem with these is the sills are covered with a very thick, tough rubberised paint up to the first swage line which hides grot well. I peeled a chunk off and the metal came with it.

 

A bit further along...Two in the pink and one in....well, you get the idea.

 

Underneath, it looked ok apart from this little outrigger which seems to have suffered from use as a jacking point.

In the pic above you can see the plastic sill trim in place, which turned out to be hiding some horrors - its a bad moisture and mud trap.

 

Some bashing with a chisel made some holes along 3/4 of the sills length.

 

I cut the outer skin off to see the full extent...

 

With the trim off, the bottom surface of the sill was pretty rotten for about half its length. The vertical inner face is pretty solid though - it resisted some heavy bashing with the chisel.

 

poking my hand up, I could feel a plastic bag full of something so I started pulling....

 

WTF? If I was going to be pulling out bags of stuff that had been hidden in the sills, I at least want it to be a few kilos of coke, not foam mousse. Talk about fire hazard...if I had started welding, this would have gone up in flames pronto.

 

Turns out its Landrovers cheap way of blocking off the sill from the inside of the upper structure. Peeking up the hole shows the seatbelt mech and the back of the interior trim panels. There were two of these blocks up there.

 

I started cutting into the strengthening rib towards the rear....damn, this has more layers than an Amway marketing scam scheme...

 

But with the loose stuff removed it seems quite simple really.

 

And thats where I got to this evening. I have to work rush around pretending to work tomorrow morning, but the afternoon is free. I will head to town and pick up some 1.2mm steel as I have hardly any left and maybe a new grinder. My second one which I use for cleaning up metal has no guard on it, which gives me the willies when using it with the knotwheel.

[Skizzer]

Kudos to you for not having fled screaming, like I would have.

 

This isn't making me feel any more confident about the idea of buying, say, a Rancho off Leboncoin on the strength of a fresh CT.

 

Looking forward to the next instalment...

[dave21478]

Yeah.

Mechanically, the CT is about the same as a UK MOT, infact, probably a bit more in-depth regarding shock absorber efficiency, wheel alignment etc. but the corrosion thing is a joke. I mentioned it elsewhere but the ex ladyfriend21478 had a Renault 21 estate with the sill and bottom of the door post so rotten the door dropped by six inches when you opened it and flapped around loosely when open as the bottom hinge was held in place by fresh air and the speaker wiring. Passed CT no problems year after year with just advisories for the corrosion and "door attachment abnormality". It would have been laughed out of a UK MOT bay several years ago.

 

The Freelanders CT report has always said "multiple points of corrosion, cracks or holes" which could mean just a few wee rot spots on non-structural parts or it could be as pictured above.

[DS20]

That is some impressive corrosion to the sills; I didn't think that Freelanders got that bad...  Still, full marks for repairing the Landy and not sending her to the scrapheap.  Freelanders aren't the best-loved of Green Oval products, but I think that they're really very good, given the market niche that they are aimed at (sort of soft-roader).  

[John F]

Bloody hell, that was hiding its rot well.

 

Are you going to strip out the carpet, etc. before welding?

[Magnificent Rustbucket]

I'm astonished how much rust this has turned out to have.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

If my name was on the V5, that Freelander would be bean cans by now, so kudos for fixing it. I'm amazed by that rot. They're ultra modern to me so I probably wouldn't have even looked at the sills if I was buying one. 

[brickwall]

Great write up. It's quite often the way, when you see the amount of crust, that the heart sinks. I find the best thing is to do what you did and just get the grinder in there and cut it all out as quickly as possible. There is no point in staring at it wondering - you just get depressed.

 

Cut out the rot!

 

Amazing how tidy and better it looks in a short space of time. You feel like you have made progress and the heart returns to normal position.

[dave21478]

I will double-check before I get to that point, but I believe all this is far enough away from the interior bits to not need the carpets out. The sill hangs down a fair bit below the floor level.

 

I just have to get on with it....many would scrap it and move on, but replacement vehicles are too expensive here so I am committed to repairing it.

 

Todays progress has been limited to picking up a big sheet of 1.2mm steel from the metals merchant in town, and a bottle of rust killer/primer stuff which the guy reckons is hot stuff. Well, he was selling it to me so he was unlikely to say it was pish I suppose, but he seemed pretty genuine about it and they are decent guys there.

I might have a prod at it after dinner, but Im bloody tired today. I had to do actual work this morning

[dave21478]

Got some tinkering time in this afternoon, and managed to get some fresh metal stuck to it.

 

Step one was to sort some tunes out in the garage. I hate working in silence. I dug some hopelessly out of date equipment out of the cupboard and plugged it all in. Fuck your ipods, this Creative Zen must be 15 years old and still works a treat.

 

I bought another grinder too. Im very happy with it in an annoyed way. I hesitated on buying another Bosch like the one I already have but though it was a little too dear, so plumped for this cheaper B&D, expecting it to be not as good. Turns out to be more powerful and much smoother than the Bosch. Oh well.

 

I dont know what this stuff is...its thin alloy sheeting with German writing on it...looks like it was tourist information signs in the past. There were hundreds of them in the garage when I moved in. Its thin enough to cut easily with scissors but strong enough to form to shapes accurately and be bent/folded unlike cardboard. Ideal for making templates.

 

I chopped a bit more rot out and made a start to welding in new sections. I started at the back where the inner support is multi-layered. This is all hidden inside the sill and doesnt have to be pretty, just strong. Also visible, the end of the sill is rotten. I will need to get the wheel off to get access to that.

 

My wee pillar drill started being an arse and kept tripping the garage RCD even when not running. I ran an extension into the house and plugged it into the kitchen and it works fine. Odd.

 

More.

 

More

 

And close that section off...

 

The welding on the left side of the jacking point kept going to hell...must be contaminants on the steel or something. I wanged several beads on top of each other to beef it up a bit.

 

I have stopped for dinner. Being a sado with no social life, I will probably get a bit more done this evening.

 

[twosmoke300]

When I make up cardboard templates im always tempted to soak it in fibre glass resin and bung it on . Never had but im guessing that would make me a bad person.

[John F]

dave21478, on 26 Sept 2014 - 6:09 PM, said:

 

Being a sado with no social life, I will probably get a bit more done this evening.

 

 

[dave21478]

I didnt get a huge amount done last night as it was a bit late to be messing about with grinders and stuff, but things went pretty well today....

 

I fitted the new lower part for the internal strengthening rib...

 

 

I removed and rebuilt the wee outrigger. I made it out of thicker steel (2.2mm I think?) that I had lying around to give it some strength, but this meant my folds were not as sharp as I would have liked hence its slightly rounded corners. I made the countersunk drain holes by drilling a 25mm hole then placing the metal over the end of a large ring spanner and placing an old towball on top, which I belted with the hammer to bend down the lip of the hole.

 

I cut out the end of the sill and started rebuilding that area.

 

Looking better. I left a hole at the bottom of the lip to act as a drain and hopefully prevent muck building up in there again.

 

Photos get thin on the ground for the next bit as it was a bit of an arse to do. I bent up a single length of steel for the outer skin. Dear Santa - a sheet metal folder please. Until then I have to make do with some bits of angle-iron a wooden fence post and a bit of railway track to use as an anvil. I then drilled a load of holes along the bottom, clamped it, made the final cuts along the upper edge to get it sitting flush and welded it in. Lots of clamps, lots of hammering and a fair bit of swearing, and its done....

 

 

The angle of this bit turned out not quite right but its behind the plastic wheel arch spat, so who cares?

 

I now need to turn it round and have a look at the other side. Will it be better or worse than this side? Place bets now!

[RichardMoss]

 

She's organising a whip-round to buy a new sill for the other side of the car

[brickwall]

Coming along nicely. What's your technique for filling a hole after you've blown through?

[dave21478]

If its small enough I just run circles round the perimeter of the hole, building it up again, if its to big it gets a patch.

 

 

I turned the car around this evening and got it up on the spare wheels. Prodding at the outer skin it only seems rotten over the rear 1/4 of its length. Whether the inside is any better remains to be seen.

Unfortunately my garage is a flimsy metal hanger which acts as quite an effective amplifier so grinding late in the evening is off the cards, so I will get on it tomorrow morning.

[dave21478]

This looks familiar...

 

The rot was the same as the other side but didnt extend as far along the sill. I replaced pretty much the whole length on the other side, this one only needed about a third of that. Here it is cut open, rot removed and I am welding in a new lower section on the first layer of supporting rib.

 

Just the very bottom of the wheel arch/sill end was rusty. I chopped the whole end off...

 

I guess I forgot to take photos of the repair to the lower part of the second rib. Here it is being closed up with a new outer skin...

 

I still need to dress the welds as my flapwheels are all pretty worn so will get new ones soon. I still have the outrigger to replace, but that shouldnt take long.

The fuel tank cradle isnt too smart, so will have a look at that when I am done, then it will need a patch on the rear door skin under the handle.

[alf892]

Proper nice welding and no nonsense fabrication there........time to buy something more rusty!

[brickwall]

Really nice work. That'll buff up just the thing, I also like the way you make up sections

[dave21478]

Right, so lets have a look at the tailgate - its a common problem for a wee rust hole to appear under the handle.

 

Ah FFS....

 

Now I should have cut the hole back to bare metal and cut a patch to the exact size and butt-welded it in place. I couldnt be harrised though, and 96% of this is hidden by the handle and the numberplate anyway so I just cut the rot off and lashed a couple of plates over the top....

 

Buffed down and painted, the repair is completely* invisible....Nice masking job, Dave.

 

I got a couple of cans of black stone-chip shield and gave both sills a 1987 Cortina style tidemark...more great masking on the right hand side, Dave.

 

And thats about it. The fuel tank cradle needs a little attention but I have had my fill of welding for now...also due to my typical luck and sound economic reasoning, I filled the tank right up about 40 minutes before the clutch finally gave up. Its way too heavy to be messing with just now.

 

Longer term, the paint will need done, I dont like the black sills. Each door has a dent in it and the bonnet has been badly sprayed in the past, so I really need to do them all...plus the sills....may as well do the whole fecking car as since the roof comes off there is only a wee bit of rear quarter left really, which will save messing about with colour matching and I am bored of red anyway.

 

I have ordered the hydraulics for the clutch. I havent ordered the clutch kit yet, I will wait till its in bits and I can assess the flywheel. Its a DMF and I need to decide whether to keep it or go for a solid conversion. Given the cars mileage, I reckon solid will be the way forward, but we will see....